Embroidery for Tea Party

Please excuse the tacky, wrinkled backdop. I was swamped and wanted to get this post up.

Today, a dear friend came to do some special embroidery.  She brought 14 linen napkins to embroider for an upcoming event at her home.  Susanna loves to entertain.   So for her church’s fundraising auction she donated a tea party for 8 at her beautiful home!  With a well-deserved reputation as an exceptional hostess, I imagine the tea party was a hot item at the auction.

With plans to use her mother’s china tea cup collection, Susanna wanted embroidered napkins–each different–to sit with each unique tea cup.

At the big estate sale we attended last month, she purchased 14 never-used linen napkins.  After soaking and laundering to remove the yellow age spots found on most of the textiles at that sale, they were ready for designs from Bernina’s Sandy Clough Collection.

NOTE:  A reader just alerted me to a beautiful, similar collection, Victorian Tea Party  from Artistic Designs.  Right now, the set is on sale at Oregon Patchworks for $15. 

These designs are just spectacular.  The “lace” doily that each cup sits upon is as intricate as any French lace you could buy.  She used 80 wt. Madeira Cotona for this portion of the design.  Years ago, when the collection was fairly new, my mother fell in love with them and embroidered a tabletopper/centerpiece with the designs.

It was such fun to watch Susanna’s fascination with embroidery and her wonder of the miracles of my Brother Quattro.  For those unfamiliar with machine embroidery, even the most basic models are intriguing.  But she was awestruck working on this beauty.

After 5 hours of laughing and learning and way too much chatting, we had 4 napkins done!  Only 4!  It seems certain that we will have to get together again….and again.  Hurrah!

Our sweet husbands offered to take us out for dinner after all our “hard work.”   Instead, we opted for a pot luck with the guys in my kitchen.

Bob threw a few burgers and hot dogs on the grill, I sliced up leftover roasted chicken in the fridge, Susanna’s John pulled out a cucumber/onion salad from their refrigerator along with a delicious homemade dessert.  With the new jar of bread and butter pickles John had put up last week, we had a feast. John recently retired from his lifelong occupation as a physical therapist.  Now he’s a canner!

What a great day–good friends, good food, good sewing.  Lucky me.